The present disclosure relates to an apparatus and a method for processing at least one sample.
An apparatus for processing at least one sample, particularly analytical instruments and more particularly medical instruments, serve to process samples in order to allow the samples to be analyzed. Such samples include but are not limited to body fluids which are examined, especially blood or any other liquid reagents used in the medical field. Modern apparatus of this kind are largely fully automatic in operation and only the samples stored in reagent vessels have to be inserted into the apparatus and the desired analysis has to be entered.
The present disclosure is intended for apparatuses which operate with liquids reagents contained in the reagent vessels which may be made of plastics. The apparatus usually have an input for inputting a vessel into a processing chamber where the intended processing such as an analysis is carried out. Automated apparatus process a plurality of vessels such as five or eight vessels which are input in a so-called rack. The vessels are processed in a subsequent order.
It may be the case that a further sample is intended to be processed before all of the samples input by the rack are processed. Particularly, hematology is critical in terms of time as whole blood has to be re-suspended as promptly as possible to the measurement because blood particles sediment fast.
Using the above-described apparatus for processing a sample provides advantages concerning the handling. Nevertheless, there are still some drawbacks. For this reason, apparatus have been provided which allow for the manually input of a further sample. For example a so-called STAT sample (STAT=short turn around time) can be loaded manually into a carrier at the bottom of an input stack. Such loading of a STAT tube causes another tube to be removed from its carrier. Thus, such a single tube input interrupts the automated input reducing the throughput of the apparatus. Further, users have to wait a significant period of time until the single tube inlet is accessible after request.
Another known apparatus comprises a first input for inputting a first vessel and a separate second input for inputting a second vessel into a processing chamber. The first and second vessels may be linearly moved in all three dimensions of space to a processing position in the processing chamber. Thus, this apparatus uses several linear axes increasing the manufacturing costs of the apparatus. Further, the coordination of the handling of the different samples along the linear axes is rather complex.
Therefore, there is a need for an apparatus for processing a sample allowing processing of not only automatically input vessels but also STAT vessels, which are to be processed with a higher priority than the automatically input vessels, such that the manufacturing costs are decreased and the workflow is improved or accelerated.